1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a means and/or method for determining the machinability of refractories and/or non-destructively ascertaining, measuring, and evaluating characteristics of the inside surface finish of conduits or drilled holes in solid bodies, such as in said graphite cores. The invention also relates to a means and/or method for determining frictional pressure losses of a gas flowing through these conduits or drilled holes. The invention further relates to the optimization of the production, machining and processing of graphite cores for nuclear reactors.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A surface texture measurement technique is described in ASA B 46.1 published by the ASME in 1962. In general, in this technique a stylus tracer head traverses a given sampling length to give attenuation-compensated microinch readouts. The reference also defines such terms as surface roughness, waviness, and lay; as well as describing the stylus-type instruments which are employed in measuring those quantities. As "an optimization" technique, however, the surface texture measurement technique described in this reference is not considered at all comparable or competitive with the friction factor testing apparatus and method of the present invention. Problems of this published technique include: the stylus wearing away the measured surface; poor reproducibility; ambiguous extrapolation to flow and pressure effects; only partial inside diameter (I.D.) surface measurement; and inaccessability of the surface to measurement. Stated another way, the friction factor testing technique of the present invention in a non-destructive test (NDT), whereas the ASME method is a destructive test when applied to holes bored in solid bodies such as of graphite.